University of Alabama Football Report for 8/27/04

My past is a stupid butterfly’s overseas voyage.
-- Czeslaw Milosz

This is the last week we have nothing to talk about. The Olympics – they know their place – are winding down just before the college football season kick-off game, Trojans vs. Hokies, which sounds like a night club game mentioned in the new bio of Joe Namath by Mark Kriegel.

It’s dangerous to tread this path. Namath is football. He’s the jump pass, the Orange Bowl, the back-to-back, the cheap shot, the bomb, the fur coat, the Playboy Mansion, the backyard toss to Bobby Brady, the clean oven, the panty hose, the variety show, and – more and more with each passing year – the Guarantee.

Now, understand me, Our Blessed Saint of Rainbow City is no Namath – no one is. He’s far more Bible than Broadway. He probably doesn’t have a furrier on speed-dial or llama-hair carpet in his den. And I doubt he’ll ever kick Lindsay Lohan out of a penthouse a la Joe Willie and Ann-Margret. But the boy is tough. And the boy can throw.

In space, there are places named after numbers. The sheer volume of needed nomenclatures became overwhelming quickly and thus we are left with such unromantic stars as 78779-N. Sports have places named after numbers, too. For the Brodie, his number’s called and we await.

Roll Tide.